It’s Space Jam week! Anyone familiar with voice acting will immediately recognize the name Mel Blanc. For decades, Blanc popularized the art of voice through many iconic cartoons, among them including, of course, nearly every major original Looney Tunes character.
Mark of the Witch (also known as Another), written and directed by Jason Bognacki, is described as a horror fantasy film. It tells the story of Jordyn, played by Paulie Rojas, who is confronted with her Aunt Ruth’s (Nancy Wolfe) attempted suicide just minutes after blowing out her birthday candles, and soon discovers a dark secret about herself. Jordyn just wanted to know who she is and where she comes from, which her Aunt Ruth acknowledges is a perfectly normal thing for anyone to wonder about.
Let’s be honest, if you’re stuck in a forest without other people, it’s cooler to pal around with a dragon than with apes. Sorry Tarzan, but Pete had a way better messed up childhood than you. While Pete’s Dragon doesn’t quite fit into the live-action reboot trend that Disney is on, it’s certainly of the same mind.
It’s Space Jam week! We currently live in an age where sequels are determined by the success of a film’s opening weekend, announced on the morning after a healthy weekend gross is reported. Heck, in some cases, films get sequels before they are even released to success in the first place; but for every Guardians of the Galaxy that would happily boast it would return, you have a Last Witch Hunter with a broken ego and a failed franchise.
Varda Bar-Kar’s latest documentary Big Voice follows the lives of a Santa Monica school choir over the course of a year, under the instruction of their inspirational yet no-nonsense teacher. Mr Huls, teacher extraordinaire, is an intriguing character – full of passion and with motivation to make the choir bigger and better than ever before. Whilst Mr Huls is certainly the driving force in the documentary, it is Bar-Kar’s interviews with the students which are arguably most interesting.
Is anyone really surprised that one of the biggest companies in the world had a less-than-pristine start? The story of how Ray Kroc took over McDonald’s isn’t a secret, as I recall first hearing about it in my teenage years. It’s not like the shady story has dampened its revenue in any way, so why bother trying to keep all the wheeling and dealing a secret?
Whit Stillman’s adaption of Jane Austen’s relatively unknown novella, Lady Susan, follows the delightfully scandalous exploits of the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale). Lady Susan is forced to leave the Manwaring family’s estate in the midst of adulterous allegations, instead taking up residence with her in-laws and their handsome young relative, Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), whereby she attempts to marry off her long-suffering daughter and elevate her own social standing in the process. The ensuing events make for one of the most entertaining and joyfully witty Austen adaptations we have yet been treated to on screen.
Hey, it’s Space Jam Week! Among totems of ’90s nostalgia, few remain as prominent and present in 2016 as Space Jam. The film was Warner Brother’s attempt to turn Michael Jordan’s cultural capital cinematic, as well as the first use of their iconic stable of cartoon characters in a feature since the compilation films of the ’80s.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is Silent Films from the 1920’s that are worth seeking out.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Me Before You, Popstar:
One annoying trend nowadays is for people to mix their genuine reactions to a film with the hype and varied opinions of others, judging it not on its content, but what you thought it was going to be. Quentin Tarantino flipped heads last year with The Hateful Eight, a considerably slower but angrier entry into his filmography, which caused anger amongst many filmgoers who were expecting another Spaghetti Western tribute that mixed modern music and quick-paced action. This highlights the problem with auteur theory and the reliance of marketing in the current movie climate, where many movie marketeers either must spoil an entire film within the trailer to gain the audience’s confidence to go see it or mismarket a film because they’re unsure on how to sell a unique/niche product to a broad audience.
As a wise man once said “time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ / into the future.” It’s pretty gross to think about, but the seminal event in all of our lives, Space Jam, turns 20 this year. Seems like just yesterday that Michael Jordan rescued Bugs, Daffy and the gang from a lifetime of cosmic-slavery, but here we are.
Have we all let the farting corpse premise sink into our bones enough to not get distracted? Remember, a movie is not its pitch or its three-line synopsis or even its trailer. The conversation about Swiss Army Man seems to be getting stuck on these points, and as eye-catching as they are, it’s leaving us in danger of settling for knee-jerk reactions instead of giving the movie an honest chance.
Within the last couple of years, the Western seems to have made a semi-comeback. Recent notable titles include John Maclean’s directorial debut Slow West, the horror-thriller Bone Tomahawk, and Quentin Tarantino’s claustrophobic and violent The Hateful Eight. And, in just a few months, a remake of The Magnificent Seven will be released, a film adaptation which has attracted the likes of Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio and more (which is hopefully an indication that it is at least halfway decent).
The subject of mental illness and disorders are interesting, educational, and sometimes sensitive topics in film. From watching movies like Girl, Interrupted, The Road Within and The Machinist, audiences learn a great deal about very real and problematic issues surrounding sufferers, however, can it be said that these representations are portrayed correctly? The film industry is guilty of depicting disorders such as hysteria as an illness that only women suffer from, and autism is far too often painted as a superpower, not to mention the unclear representation of schizophrenia, which causes audiences to confuse the illness with dissociative identity disorder.